I found out on Saturday that a friend of my mother’s is in hospital at the moment with numerous cracked ribs and a punctured lung. How she got there is, somehow, wonderfully “Oxford”.

Her husband has been very ill and is now in a wheelchair. He felt that a tree needed pruning in their back garden. Rather than ask in the tree surgeons she decided do do it herself (she is mid 60s). She put the chainsaw on a long extension and set about climbing up the tree. When she was 10 feet or so up, she began to cut but lost her footing and fell. The tree was overhanging the neighbouring garden and she bounced off the branches, landed heavily on the wall and then fell into her neighbour’s garden. At this point she feels she may have blacked out.

Now, the council own the house next door and they had recently taken the decision to turn it into a home for teenagers with very severe learning difficulties. To help these teenagers, the council had installed a large trampoline in the garden. When she came round, five of these children were bouncing up and down on the trampoline shouting “Angel from the sky! Angel from the sky!”

It took her some time to work out where she was. When she did she climbed back over the wall (no mean feat as it is 6 feet high) and dragged herself back to her ill husband. There, she made them both a cup of tea. He comfortingly said that it didn’t matter, she didn’t need to prune the tree all at once.

About Me

My name is Piers Young. I moved from IT and social software research into teaching. This is my scrapbook, commonplace etc. where I jot down my thoughts on thinking, and try to capture some of what interests, amuses or intrigues me. These are my views, temporarily, and quite possibly only my views. They are certainly not necessarily the views of my employers, past or present. Comments are always welcome and feel free to contact me here

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#SLTchat Advice would be: remember not everyone wants to lead/be SLT but everyone wants to feel proud of what they do 2 days ago